Reporting climate change in Australian papers

A new study has found that just under one third of metropolitan newspaper articles in Australia did not accept the scientific consensus that human beings are major contributors to global warming. This figure increased from 2011 to 2012 even as the number of stories that referred to climate change went down. The study looked at just over 600 newspaper articles between 2011 and 2012. So what's going on?

crank :

daviddon :

31 Oct 2013 7:03:25pm

This situation is brought about, surely, by the self-adopted role of journalists that their job is to produce a simulation of "news" by highlighting conflict in differences of opinion, or inducing them if not already in existence. Similar to naughty sly child in playground who, having provoked a fight among others, stands by pointing the finger.

For Bolt and other opionists who bulk up the "debate", the personal puffing-up gain is from approval of bystanders who enjoy a fight that they do not have to take part in (by offering serious argument themselves).

crank :

31 Oct 2013 7:35:16pm

That is not, I believe, true. In most instances the Rightwing MSM acts with one objective, to advance the interests of the global ruling class, speaking with one voice and ideological apostasy is not tolerated. A perfect example is the attack on Syria, which the entire Western MSM has fallaciously painted as a civil war and revolt against a brutal dictator. As with the peddling of lies before the 2003 aggression against Iraq or the bombing to power by NATO of jihadist thugs in Libya, the Web contains much real journalism that refutes the MSM narrative entirely, but not one word of it appears in the MSM. Similarly the vast majority of stories concerning enemies of the elite, like China, Russia and Iran, are entirely negative. Yet, when it comes to this one topic, the most crucial in all our history as a species, there is not just 'even-handedness', but either outright bias of the familiar fashion, or a false equivalence between science and truth, and lies and ideological fanaticism.

crank :

31 Oct 2013 7:39:35pm

The current generation of the great Austrayan mediocrity have made an inter-generational Faustian bargain. They get to play with their toys, the 4WDs, McMansions, Jetskis, air-conditioning etc, and their children, and all of ours, get to pay the price by the descent into Hell on earth.

crank :

31 Oct 2013 7:26:23pm

This report is, in my opinion, lessened by the idiocy of referring to the denialists, entirely of the semi house-trained Right (my generosity will be my ruin!), as 'sceptics'. Real sceptics hold their opinions tentatively, are open to rational argument and will change their beliefs without hesitation if shown that they are incorrect or not as nearly perfect as they imagined. In other words scientists are sceptics, and science advances by disproving and falsifying theories. Anthropogenic climate destabilisation science operates thus, and after 150 years or so the greenhouse theory of climate change is, as the US National Academy of Science stated (and every other national science academy on the planet agrees)is now considered 'settled science'. Denialism on the other hand, like almost all other Rightwing prejudices is a cult, where the results are known a priori from settled ideological ie pathopsychological, biases. Its dogma are irrefutable, received, wisdom, inerrant and unarguable, hence it is a low type of pseudo-science and a particularly fanatic and immensely destructive quasi-religion.Its lumpen adherents are mainly what has been called the Dunning-Krugerites, too ill-informed and intellectually insufficient to realise that they have been duped, but filled with fervour due to their inculcation by Rightwing Thought Controllers in increasingly fanatic hatred for the Left and Greenies. The denialist industry big-wigs, the recidivist peddlers of lies, half-truth, deliberate misinterpretation and paranoid delusions of immense conspiracies by the world's scientists, are a different order of creation, entirely. And, the proposition that the MSM, here or anywhere else in the West, is dedicated to 'the truth' had me guffawing out loud. The very great majority of the entirely Rightwing MSM in the West is dedicated to peddling propaganda in the interests of the parasitic capitalist elect, who own the MSM in its entirety, and ruthlessly police its ideology. And, in my humble opinion, the outer limits of that indoctrinating, thought-controlling, society-shaping apparatus is the Murdoch octopus (with apologies to cephalopods).

EIS :

31 Oct 2013 10:13:02pm

Nice florid and emotive chatter, crank. Your shallow rant has missed the obvious. The 'settled science' has been exposed to the point where the establishment will not debate the facts in open forum. And, the media concocted 'consensus' is dead and buried, the IPCC has been likened to a delinquent teenager. Many prominent scientists including Lindzen have questioned the 'settled science'.

What we did learn today was that the evil Murdoch newspapers present a diversity of views and that the evil Andrew Bolt can call the so-called science and it's proponents 'Liars' and be safe in the knowledge he will not be challenged.

You should study www.climateaudit.org and understand the flaws in your religion.

crank :

01 Nov 2013 10:01:04am

Well said EIS! A few lies, an appeal to one, rather shop-worn 'authority', the over-exposed Lindzen and the IPCC is a 'delinquent teenager', is it? Which of your thought controllers came up with that one? Devine, Bolt, Sheehan, Albrechtsen, Ackerman, or 'Big' George Pell? And News Corpse's almost total bias to the denialati becomes a 'diversity of opinions'- only with Big Brother Rupert in command, and his Ministry of Truth promulgating that 'War is Peace' and pseudo-science is fact. The Rightwing mentality only ever grows more fanatical as its intellectual insufficiency and moral insanity is exposed, because its egomania and totalitarian impulses cannot abide being proved wrong. After all, they are always 'Right' aren't they?

crank :

19 Nov 2013 1:08:01pm

jandre, the denialist industry has no credible scientific voices to spread the disinformation. The old coterie, of alumni of the tobacco harm denialist industry, a few superannuated crackpots, many openly on various Rightwing payrolls, and a few experts in other fields, with no standing in climate science, are well past their use-by date. About the last place Monckton, Ridley or Lomborg et al can get away with peddling their shop-worn wares is here, in Abbotostan or Harpie's Canadastan. No new celebrity scientists from the real world have defected to the irrational, pre-Enlightenment Right for some time (despite huge financial rewards being certain for the star defector). Meanwhile the consensus of real scientists, of all the Academies of Science of the planet, is rock-solid. The Murdoch apparat relies on its in-house denialati, wound up at regular intervals, and a risible ensemble of long discredited nonentities with no scientific standing whatsoever. The 'Free Press' in all its tawdry glory.

Peter :

01 Nov 2013 12:36:25pm

Why does the ABC not use some of the $billion provided by taxpayers to produce a unbiased investigation into the success or otherwise of the EU ETS. We keep being told that a ETS is the only way to reduce CO2 but no one including the climate change commission produces such a study.I have tried to find a report on the succes if the EU ETS that has been in operation since 2005 to no avail. Oh I did find reference to Germany building new coal fired power station Perhaps this is "swuccess"

crank :

01 Nov 2013 4:55:29pm

Quite true, Peter. The EU ETS is a fiasco, deliberately contrived, by handing out far too many emissions permits. A straight carbon tax, starting low, but growing at a set rate (which can be increased if the emergency proves even more dire), is far preferable. The proceeds must be hypothecated to financial compensation for the poor, and for renewable energy research, development and installation, and for other ecological crises. It would give the business parasites that 'certainty' that they always whiningly demand (while denying it to those whose labour they exploit)and would avert the certain disaster that emissions trading has become and will remain. 'Trading' is just a euphemism for speculation, manipulation, fraud and malfeasance and all the other ills that inevitably flow from the neo-capitalist financial Mafia.

Galileo de Perth :

01 Nov 2013 1:53:01pm

A big chunk of your report dealt with the role of Andrew Bolt - he is clearly a key player. It made a number accusatory statements about his role in this debate and that of the organisation he works for. In the interests of fairness and journalistic responsibility, it seems obligatory to invite him onto the next program to defend or state his position on the accusations made in this segement. An intelligent audience deserves the right to hear the man himself being questioned on these issues.

crank :

01 Nov 2013 5:00:22pm

Only, of course, when he allows the voice of science and rationality 50% coverage on his propaganda broadcasts. One could ask to reflect the position of science and demand 97% coverage, but let's go easy on him- for now. He must have things on his mind, like the popular reaction when the climate destabilisation catastrophe is no longer lucratively deniable, and the somewhat tenuous position that top denialati might find themselves in then.

Julian Asaint :

01 Nov 2013 5:29:20pm

The rightwing MSM has little time for the IPCC’s output. When they do deign to report it, they invariably cherry-pick and do everything possible to undermine the basic message. They are much happier peddling lies and distortion, and have actually come up with a new literature genre - Science Friction – the favoured reading material of the likes of Rush Slimeball and their mentors in the Tea Party.

crank :

janama :

01 Nov 2013 5:35:04pm

Surely if The Australian presents 50% alarmist and 50% skeptic it is fair and balanced as it should be and as they claim.

What your report doesn't address is the total bias in Fairfax and the ABC. The ABC presents NO skeptical opinions and the recent alarmist reports regards the NSW bushfires and climate change was totally biased reporting. Al Gore? you have to be kidding. Fortunately the recent Morgan poll has shown a clear majority of Australians (57%) say human-induced global warming and climate change played no part in the recent NSW bushfires compared to 37% of Australians that say it did.

You keep using this 97% consensus figure yet a quick search will show you conclusively that the research (both papers) behind that figure is flawed. Science is not run by consensus anyway.

Thank God for reporters like Terry McCrann, Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones and now Topher who actually do present the alternative view in Global warming which is now reduced to a load of bollocks by the ever increasing empirical evidence showing that the computer models have got it wrong, yet again.

crank :

01 Nov 2013 7:03:58pm

One denialist canard after another. Good God, you creatures are so predictable. The ABC does allow far too much denialist lying and misrepresentation, but basically follows the science and basic decency. Fairfax has infestations of rank denialism, particularly in the Fin Review, but the Fin basically ignores the greatest catastrophe in human history. The 97% figure, and similar figures for peer-reviewed climate science are rock solid, and to state otherwise is, in my opinion, rank mendacity. To argue for 'equivalence' between a fanatic ideological cult, financed by rich Rightwingers, particularly the fossil fuel industry, that thrives on lies, ignorance, intellectual insufficiency and bottomless Rightwing viciousness, and science so universally accepted in scientific circles as to be supported by every national Academy of Science and learned scientific society on the planet and to have been declared 'settled science', is akin to demanding equivalence between 'Creation Science' and Darwinism, or the tobacco harm denial industry and the planet's doctors and health experts. Oh, I forgot. Many of the shrinking cabal of denialist 'scientists' are veterans of the tobacco harm denial industry.

Bernard Kelly :

01 Nov 2013 5:44:24pm

Statements like 97% of climate scientists believe climate change is real and therefore the science is settled are patently misleading. The Doran paper, on which this often misquoted statistic is based says nothing of the kind.

The ATAR for BA/BSc with climate science major at Macquarie Uni is 75%, so the belief that climate scientists represent the intellectual elite does not pass muster. The best and the brightest go into other areas of study.

When the climate models, projections and data sets have been analysed by the best and the brightest, many have come to the conclusion that there is very little evidence to support the likelihood of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.

What I find disappointing about the stated position of the ABC and Fairfax press in not giving airtime or print space to dissenting views is that it is denying the analysis of many highly capable and educated people.

The decision not to publish or broadcast sceptical views is the childish equivalent of sticking ones fingers in ones ears and saying "La La La I can't hear you"

crank :

01 Nov 2013 7:09:36pm

Truly pathetic misrepresentation. Anthropogenic climate destabilisation is a theory that is constantly being improved through the normal scientific processes of experiment, observation, theorising, computer modeling and peer review. It has been accepted by ALL the national Academies of Science of this planet (I don't know if it is true on yours) and EVERY learned scientific society on Earth. That means by all types of scientists, not just, as you misleadingly imply, by climate scientists. The US National Academy of Sciences, which represents ALL disciplines, has declared it 'settled science'. Why not be a nice chap and return to the Boltosphere, where you'll no doubt receive pleasing group approval and solidarity.

crank :

01 Nov 2013 9:53:58pm

Anthropogenic climate destabilisation denialism is not 'scepticism'. Even a Murdoch 'journalist' ought to own or be able to borrow a dictionary and discern that difference. Sceptics hold their beliefs tentatively, ever ready to amend or even reject them if new evidence emerges. Denialists hold their prejudices with pathopsychological fervour, and all contrary opinion or evidence is rejected, with increasingly hysterical and paranoid vehemence. Real scientists, like climate scientists, are sceptics, always searching for better and better theories, and are ready at any time to amend their theories if new evidence, from modeling, observations in the field or some novel insight, appears. Their work goes through the peer review process, the gold standard of scientific rigour. Denialists are either ignoramuses, ideological fanatics, a few scientific crackpots, either passed by by developments or with naked conflicts of interest such as being the recipients of moneys from Rightwing propaganda outfits or directly from the fossil fuel interests or with direct financial interests themselves in mining or fossil fuel businesses. The dominance of society by the Right has led to numerous calamitous outcomes. Growing inequality. Disempowerment for the many, and the sadistic humiliation of vicious social welfare regimes. Spreading masses of working poor, toiling for subsistence wages. Foreign aggression leading to massive death-tolls of innocents in Iraq, Libya and Syria. Dumbed down, prurient and violent popular culture. Massive looting of the common wealth in privatisations and other forms of organised pillage. And, above all, the maniacal determination to destroy the habitability of the planet for our species through the relentless pursuit of ecologically destructive economic growth, come what may. And every cent of the spurious 'wealth' produced by this destruction goes to the insatiably avaricious parasite class, while billions fall into deeper and deeper misery. And of all these ecological catastrophes, those associated with the burning of fossil fuels, ie global climate destabilisation and ocean acidification (amongst others) are the very worst. The Rightwing denial of all these calamities is, in my opinion, the greatest moral outrage in human history, and when the populace finally awake to the rising probability of near term extinction for our species caused by these disasters and the denial of them, their reaction is almost certain to be, shall we say, unforgiving.

crank :

02 Nov 2013 12:16:21pm

Tom, if it walks like a duck, thinks like a duck and squawks like a duck it probably is a duck. You may not, yet, work for Murdoch, but you certainly, in my opinion, have the requisite prejudices and ideology. Was your little ditty a job application? I wonder if Chris Mitchell visits this site. I doubt it. Nothing is prepared-it's all spontaneous bile, a stream of conscious outrage at those whose idiocy, ignorance and malice are preparing the way for human destruction.

johno :

02 Nov 2013 8:48:27am

You seem to have gotten your facts wrong. The science is now perfectly clear. Human activity is unlikely to have any impact on global warming. There has been no global warming for the past 17 years. Virtually ever great big scary scenario of human induced disaster has been shown to be wrong. Only the truly ignorant still believe the planet is warming. Are you truly ignorant?

crank :

02 Nov 2013 2:31:05pm

Classic projection, such a Rightwing talent. Contrary to your (to be charitable) ignorant assertion, the planet has kept warming, albeit at a slower rate, over the last fifteen years. The denialist canard that it has not, can only be contrived from cherry-picking 1998, the year of a great El Nino, as the starting-point. Choose 1997 or 1999 and your 'argument' evaporates. The reason for the lower rate of warming is now fairly well understood. 'Global dimming' from tropospheric pollution from rapidly growing east Asian industry, burning a lot of dirty coal, is one factor. High-altitude con-trails from increased commercial jet traffic also has a role in reflecting solar energy back into space. The Sun went through a deep minimum, which led the denialati to hysterically begin predicting a new Ice Age as the result of a new Maunder or Dalton Minimum. When that proved specious, they moved on sans regret, sans apologies, sans intellectual growth. The vast bulk of the extra heat trapped over the last fifteen years has now been found in the oceans, thanks to the observations of the Argo buoys. It had to go somewhere, as the excess heat being trapped by greenhouse gases is equivalent to four Hiroshima A-bombs per second, day after day. No doubt you denialati, with your great intellectual resources and mighty self-regard have some scintillating theory as to where all that heat goes. Does it simply disappear? Let's hope it remains in the oceans, well, forever, because if it is vented, say in some new El Nino or some new climate phenomenon, then we are in for those 'interesting times' that the Chinese speak of.

Julian Asaint :

02 Nov 2013 2:52:29pm

Priceless johno, gobsmackingly priceless. If only the truly ignorant still believe the planet is warming, why do the governments of practically every country on the planet send representatives to the meetings convened to address global warming, and why do many of them then implement long-term measures to address this non-existent problem? There must be a swag of ‘truly ignorant’ people out there who are ill informed, unlike your erudite self.

crank :

02 Nov 2013 9:10:40pm

Julian, I just cannot fully understand the denialist cult. Of course there are the usual Rightwing authoritarian morons, a type once fairly rare, but which have been proliferating for years, nurtured by talk-back hatemongers, the Rightwing press and political manipulators like Howard and Abbott. I've long been convinced that the greatest weakness of 'democracy' is not the impossibility of its true existence in capitalist states where all real power resides in the hands of the rich, and where that reality, ever more ruthlessly enforced, ensures that each new generation of politicians is more mediocre and morally insane than the last. No, the greatest flaw, inherent in the very nature of democracy, is the supposed equivalence of voting power between every individual. Of course that supposed equality is, in reality, a lie, with gerrymandering, malapportionment, rigged elections, voluntary voting in most of the democratic world, the imbalance of political contributions from the rich and the utter bias of the Rightwing MSM rendering it a sick, hollow, joke. However, even worse, is the notional equivalence of 'democratic rights' between the intelligent and the dull, between the morally developed and the morally insane and between the insatiably greedy and eternally dissatisfied materialist and those who only seek a decent sufficiency and wish to see all others likewise benefited. Between the empathic and the alienated, between the compassionate and the sadistic, between the informed and the ignoramuses. A 52% majority of the worst in society can destroy the lives of all our children, and, tragically, we declare it a triumph of 'Freedom'.

Julian Asaint :

03 Nov 2013 12:55:40pm

Yes, Crank, I too can’t fathom what drives many of the denialista – other than the usual suspects (vested interests), the rest seem to be driven entirely by their political ideology, as research by Naomi Oreskes has shown. Within this context, the science becomes irrelevant, except for any straws that can be clutched at to fit their ideology – e.g. the drastic reduction in the Arctic sea’s summer-ice is not due to melting, but due to anomalous wind patterns breaking up the ice, leading to dispersal, and the temperature increases recorded by land-based stations are due to the “heat effect” from surrounding urban expansion etc, etc.

Of all the factors you list (diluting/undermining the theoretical model of democracy) the most destructive one has to be money – the US is the supreme example, where funding (directly, on campaigns, and indirectly via the army of lobby groups, media baron output etc) has hijacked the whole show, and made it into a sham democracy. I’m always amused at how frequently the media here (including the ABC) refer to the US parliamentary system as the world’s premier democracy (or words to that effect) –‘most dysfunctional’ would be nearer the mark.

crank :

04 Nov 2013 6:16:36am

The total sycophancy of our political invertebrates towards the greatest force for evil in human history, the USA (latterly rendered even more malignant by the takeover of its political processes by the Israel Lobby)is stupefying. It is mirrored by the MSM and business, as the USA is the ultimate guarantor of the parasitic international economic and social order.I think that I have never been more embarrassed to be 'Austrayan' than when the ghastly Gillard launched into her craven, wooden, plodding, groveling 'speech' to the US Congress. Unfortunately, as our role in the US spying efforts around the world shows, we have tied ourselves to a dying beast, despised everywhere. In Indonesia they well know that when that US favourite, the genocidal beast Suharto, seized power, the US Embassy presented him with a death-list of Indonesians that the Yankee Reich wanted exterminated. The Suhartoites got a little carried away, and slaughtered a million, which was welcomed in Washington with huge enthusiasm. Undoubtedly US snooping continues to be at least partly to draw up such lists for any country the US wishes to at some time subvert and install brutal, but obedient thugs, in power. That and industrial espionage, blackmail, financial insider trading etc.

Pertinax :

Bacon is defining the truth as a selectively quoting of figures from one opinion poll (she won't name) of a non-random sample (asking AGW scientists if they believe in their own research).

Then arguing that people only believe what newspapers tell them, so we must remove freedom of the press and control what people can read. Something straight from the Frankfurt School and the rationalisations of every single dictator and totalitarian state.

I remember when journalists saw it as their job to question this sort of stuff, not to uncritically propagate such nonsense.

The science of surface temperature warming is an incredibly complex business with a lot of unknowns. Something you can't change by rigging opinion polls and silencing all dissent.

You could quote from the IPCC review of the peer reviewed science and Bacon would still call it dangerous skepticism for saying anything not covered by her opinion poll.

crank :

03 Nov 2013 9:04:56pm

My dear Pertinax, to deny the near unanimity of the planet's climate scientists, and all the national Academies of Science and all the learned scientific societies (ie all scientists of all disciplines)in accepting the theory of anthropogenic climate destabilisation by the emission of 'greenhouse' gases, is, in my opinion, irrefutably quite mad. To do so, and I know that many on the Right do believe this particular lunacy, one must conjure up a vast conspiracy of all these scientists, tens of thousands of them (and since the 1840s, when the relevant science began to be discovered) and the IPCC, the UN, most of the planet's Governments, insurance companies etc. The well-described paranoia of the Rightwing Authoritarian Personality has never, I believe, been more florid than in this intellectual, moral and spiritual group hysteria. I really think that you and all your mates ought to seek psychological help, pronto.

qwerty :

04 Nov 2013 11:20:38am

As someone with a BSc Hon in science I have a reasonable understanding of the issues involved in this debate. But this interviewee comes across as being extremely biased and ignorant of anything to do with climate science. As times goes on and nature does its own thing the “science” is becoming less certain.

Thank you ABC for demonstrating how far from reality many supposedly intelligent people are.

Julian Asaint :

04 Nov 2013 1:14:34pm

Not sure how to take your post qwerty (“As times goes on... the ‘science’ is becoming less certain”). IF you are implying that over time scientists are becoming less certain that AGW is a reality, this is a complete inversion of the truth. Every IPCC report shows progressively increased confidence levels regarding the serious (and growing) problem AGW represents.

crank :

04 Nov 2013 6:43:39pm

qwerty, your assertion that the science of anthropogenic climate destabilisation is becoming less certain is plainly wrong. The latest IPCC Report raised the level of confidence to 95% from 90%, all, I mean every single one, of the planet's national Academies of Science and learned scientific societies confirm what the US National Academy of Science has declared 'settled science', and 95% plus of actively publishing climate scientists are in full agreement with the theory. So the question becomes, I believe, are you sadly mistaken, because of ignorance and possibly the type of intellectual insufficiency that makes grasping simple facts difficult, or are you a knowing disinformationist, who gets some sort of obscure pathopsychological reward from being fast and loose with the facts in regard to the greatest catastrophe ever to befall humanity. And, in my opinion at least, it is not impossible to imagine that you fit into both these categories.

Marc Hendrickx :

05 Nov 2013 9:22:27am

Once again ABC present only one side of the story. Some comments on Wendy Bacon's work from Don Aitkin, foundation chairman of the Australian Research Council and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra.

http://donaitkin.com/global-warming-and-climate-change-in-the-press/

I listened last week to an astonishingly ignorant radio interview of a professor of journalism who had measured the proportion of news stories in the Australian press that dealt with ‘climate change’ between 2011 and 2012 in the same three-month periods, and had discovered not only that the numbers declined over the period but that the proportion that seemed sceptical in tone had risen. ‘Quite extraordinary’, said the professor, and went on to say that scientists and journalists were both seekers after the truth, and when 97.4 per cent of scientists said that human beings were caused climate change, and they (the scientists) are truthful, why would newspapers be saying in effect that ‘climate change’ was a matter of open debate?

crank :

05 Nov 2013 5:18:49pm

Of course, it is not possible that Don Aitkin is an anthropogenic climate destabilisation denier, like Mr Hendrickx, is it? I do enjoy the manner in which the denialati are running a 'tag-team' effort here, with each new pundit retiring hurt after but one foray, to be replaced by another. Of course, anyone who reads the Rightwing MSM knows that Bacon's work is factual, which is why the denialati present no contradicting evidence or facts, just the usual assertions that take the place of logic, rational argument or intellectual consistency in their peculiar and suicidal cult.

crank :

05 Nov 2013 5:27:20pm

Yep-a brief perusal of Aitkin's site shows him to be plainly, I would say, an anthropogenic climate destabilisation denier of the most zealous type. The old denialist echo-chamber is at work again. And he has the gall to call climate science a 'religion'. Oh, pot, how black thou art!

crank :

05 Nov 2013 5:46:04pm

Aitken was so very predictable. The usual suspects are all there-Judith Curry, Matt Ridley, Watts, et al, but no Marc Hendrickx. Fish and ponds, I suppose. The top denialati are a select crew, no doubt about it, although new devotees seem rather thin on the ground, or at least those with some credentials, no matter how tatty.

Julian Asaint :

05 Nov 2013 7:26:32pm

Perhaps you’d be happier Jimi if we licensed all scientists, after making them sign an oath of allegiance to ‘The Market’? I think I’ll reserve my character/integrity doubts for the puppeteers (aka politicians) presiding over the current policy of non-binding inaction on AGW.